Ad Tech
CTV ad spend nears $38 billion — and beats linear at the upfronts for the first time
US connected-TV advertising is on track for roughly $38 billion in 2026, up about 15% year over year, per eMarketer's forecast. For context on how top-heavy the global market is: eMarketer's international outlook has US CTV spend at more than ten times that of the next largest markets, the UK and China, each at under $3.5 billion.
The symbolic milestone landed this year in the upfronts — TV's annual advance ad-commitment ritual. eMarketer projects 2026 US CTV upfront spending at $17.7 billion, passing primetime linear TV's $17.0 billion for the first time. The industry has spent a decade saying budgets follow audiences to streaming; the upfront crossover is that thesis showing up in TV's most traditional buying motion.
Looking further out, MNTN Research (again on eMarketer data) projects US CTV reaching $46.9 billion by 2028, at which point it would surpass traditional TV advertising outright.
What's driving the growth is not a mystery: streaming now regularly captures nearly half of all US TV time (see Nielsen's Gauge), ad-supported tiers have become the default entry point on the major SVODs, and FAST inventory keeps expanding. The open questions for 2027 are the perennial ones — measurement currencies, transparency in programmatic supply paths, and whether CPMs hold as inventory floods in.